For those of you in Melbourne over the pre-Christmas period Source Photographica are having an exhibition of photography from the 7th – 14th of December at their gallery in Brighton which includes some of my own work from Iceland and Antarctica. Source Photographica are located at 1A Rose St. in Brighton and the exhibition is open from 11am – 6pm daily. Entry is free.
Category: Iceland
Travel Photographer of the Year : Highly Commended
The winning entrants into the Travel Photographer of the Year 2012 competition were announced yesterday and I am very pleased to report that the photograph I chose to enter into the competition (‘Blue Berg’) was ‘Highly Commended’ with third place in the ‘Single Shot Water Category’. Those of you who may be familiar with my photography will no doubt recognise this photograph as it was also awarded with a Gold Award at the 2011 Australian Professional Photography awards and also won the Extreme Environment Photograph of the Year People’s Choice Award in 2011. I had not planned to enter this photograph in any further competitions but was inspired to do so by the category title: ‘Single Shot Water’ and its description ‘Water in one of its many forms. An image which encapsulates water as a liquid, solid or vapour’.
The winning prints (including my own) from Travel Photographer of the Year 2012 will be exhibited at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in London from 12th July to 18th August 2013. Unfortunately, I will miss the exhibition in London by a single day as I need to be in Iceland for my 2013 Summer workshop; which commences on the 12th of July. I then head straight from Iceland to Svalbard and the Arctic to lead two expeditions (The Jewels of the Arctic) that take in the very best of Svalbard, Spitsbergen and Greenland. I will transit back through London in early September and thus will sadly miss the exhibition. If you are able to make it please let me know what you thought.
Footnote: What inspired me to enter the Travel Photographer of the Year competition was that it is one of the few photographic competitions today that still judges the ‘print’ rather than a compressed jpeg. I wrote recently of my disillusionment with so many of the photography competitions that market themselves today and that make their judgements solely on a compressed jpeg file. Call me ‘old school’; but the craft of producing a beautiful fine art print is one of the most enjoyable aspects of photography for me and is how I prefer to have my work judged.
PhotoPlus in New York – Print on Display
If you are headed to New York City for PhotoPlus Expo this week at the Javits Center be sure to stop past the Moab and Legion Paper stand where Moab are going to be displaying one of my large prints from Iceland ‘Selfoss under Storm‘ along with Prints from the other Moab Masters. The photograph I chose for the show this year is one of my favourites from my 2010 Iceland trip and was taken at Selfoss Waterfall, just upstream from Dettifoss where glacial meltwater thunders through a martian like canyon. It is an amazing location and one I am very much looking forward to re-visiting on my summer workshop in July next year.
OCTOBER PHOTOGRAPH OF THE MONTH: OF FIRE AND BRIMSTONE
Without doubt one of the most otherworldly and alien locations I have ever had the pleasure to visit and photograph is Hveravellir in Iceland. I first became fascinated with this remote area many years ago when I saw a photograph of the iridescent blue geothermal pool that lies in the middle of the barren Icelandic wilderness. Sulphur was rising from its boiling surface with what looked like ice or snow around the edge of the pool (what looks like ice or snow is in fact volcanic silica deposits). How could such a place exist on Earth? I simply had to get there one day and see it for myself.
I finally did get to Hveravellir in 2010 just as the sun was setting and made a number of photographs of the geothermal features. This visit resulted in a photograph I titled “The Well of Life” that won a Silver Award at the 2011 APPA Australian Professional Photography Awards and that subsequently went on to win a Gold Award at the International Loupe Awards. It is one of the favourite photographs in my collection and a large 20 x 30″ Artist Proof print hangs in my studio today. I had a real epic getting out of Hveravellir on this first trip and subsequently wrote a short blog piece about my experience and the travel that went into the making of this image. I recently retold this story to Resource Photo.Video.Lifestyle magazine as part of an interview for their website.
I had an opportunity to return to Hveravellir in August this year during my 2012 Iceland Workshop. This was an unplanned treat for those on the trip as the area is very remote and getting there (and back) is somewhat logistically difficult. However, we had deliberately left our itinerary very open on this expedition to enable us to take full advantage of the prevailing weather and light and it just so happened that we ended up in Hveravellir an hour or so before sunrise. The conditions were very different this time however and consisted of a fiery sunrise that has resulted in a very different image to my previous photograph. This new image of the geothermal pool at Hveravellir titled “Of Fire and Brimstone” is my photograph of the month for October. A higher resolution version of this photograph can be seen on my main website at www.jholko.com in the Iceland II Portfolio.
If you are interested in travelling to Iceland with me to photograph its wondrous landscape there is one spot that has just become available on my 2nd Winter trip that departs on the 22nd of March next year. If you would like to register for this last spot or would like any additional information just drop me an email at info@jholko.com
I will be running both Summer and Winter expeditions to Iceland in 2014 and have already received pre-registration requests to hold spaces on these trips. I am not quite ready to announce dates and details for these 2014 trips but if you are interested you can also email me at info@jholko.com to be amongst the first to be notified when bookings are opened.
RESOURCE PHOTO.VIDEO.LIFESTYLE INTERVIEW
I was recently interviewed by Resource Photo.Video.Lifestyle magazine about my landscape photography and the content of the interview is now online at their website HERE. This interview was particularly good fun for me as the nature of the questions gave me an opportunity to talk about how I got my start in photography, in addition to my thoughts on working in the field in remote locations, the importance of the right equipment and the opportunity to talk about my workshops – including the recently announced 2013 Antarctica expedition. I hope you enjoy the read over a morning / afternoon cup of coffee.
I am including below an image I shot on my last Iceland workshop in Landmannalaugar in August this year. Photographed from the top of one of the regions highest peaks in overcast misty conditions it was a very stark contrast to my visit two years earlier (during which time I witnessed some of the most amazing light I have yet had the pleasure to experience). I thought at the time that the grey misty skies of this trip were conspiring against me and that there was going to be little in the way of opportunity. I photographed anyway and found when I got back to the studio and was reviewing my images that I actually really liked the soft lighting which seems to work so well with the pastel pallet of Landmannalaugars amazing volcanic mountains. This is an area of Iceland very near and dear to my heart and one I am very much looking forward to revisiting next year during my summer workshop. A higher resolution version of this photograph can be seen in my portfolio at www.jholko.com under Iceland II.
I am currently working on dates for the 2014 Iceland Workshops and hope to have these finalised and online in the next month or so.
www.WILDNATUREPHOTOTRAVEL.com 